


Five Years Ago And Three Thousand Miles Away

by AbbyBanks



Category: due South
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-02
Updated: 2010-12-02
Packaged: 2017-10-13 11:55:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/137064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AbbyBanks/pseuds/AbbyBanks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"When I left Ray and returned to Canada."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Years Ago And Three Thousand Miles Away

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [DS_Snippets](http://community.livejournal.com/ds_snippets/110629.html) on LiveJournal, for a lyrics prompt from [_The Bones Of You_](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-r3Bs_KkP94) by Elbow (see below).

When I left Ray and returned to Canada...

Even now, I find it surprisingly difficult to say.

When I left Ray and returned to Canada as I did, in a fit of madness and blind panic, the last memory I took was of him standing in the middle of his apartment, _our_ apartment, looking lost and alone.

It was much later before I could bear to take that memory out and examine it, to realise how completely the two of us, as a couple, had taken over that space and displaced his old life. His band posters replaced by battered maps: King William Island, Beechey Island. His closets full of waterproofs and mukluks alongside t-shirts and biker boots. A pair of snowshoes mounted on the wall. An array of whalebone and antler carvings crammed into the shelf above the television. A framed photograph of the two of us standing on the ice of the Beaufort sea, bearded, grinning like fools. A shelf full of the books I had made him read before even leaving Chicago, wishing to impress on him the hardships he was letting himself in for.

He had incorporated me into his life seamlessly. So seamlessly I hadn’t even noticed it.

When Francesca sent me the photographs this year, of the Christmas party she had bullied him into holding, I finally saw it. The walls now were bare, the shelves occupied by a few CDs and police procedural manuals; apparently preparatory for a new career at the Chicago Police and Firefighter Training Academy.

I confess it: I took out a lens and scanned the room, looking for relics of our adventure.

Nothing.

And when I turned the glass on him, he was smiling for the camera but his eyes looked haunted. Haunted, and as empty as the shelves.

**Author's Note:**

>  _And I dealt with this years ago,_  
>  I took a hammer to every memento.  
> But image on image like beads on a rosary  
> Pull through my head as the music takes hold  
> And the sickener hits; I can work till I break,  
> But I love the bones of you-  
> That, I will never escape.  
> [The Bones Of You, Elbow.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-r3Bs_KkP94)
> 
> The title also comes from this song.


End file.
